An Inconvenient Future: Tomorrows Future Today

By Robert Byrum

As humans our time frames are too short. We live in terms of today, tomorrow, next week or possibly next year. We cannot fathom how our actions or non-actions may affect the future in fifty, a hundred or two hundred years. We are nor wired for that. We will not be here, so why be concerned about something

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Sep 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781684864799

Robert Byrum

The author has discovered that the challenges of writing can be personally rewarding and fun when exploring new ideas that can be share with others. He has developed many interests during his long lifetime; his profession Structural Engineering, fishing, hunting, world travel, training dogs and now the new adventure; writing. He believes that: "The man who pursues happiness wisely will aim at the possession of many different interests in addition to those central ones upon which his life is built." Bertrand RussellIt has truly been a happy and rewarding adventure.All proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated by the author to the Environmental Defense Fund

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An Inconvenient Future

Tomorrows Future Today

by

Robert Byrum

An Inconvenient Future

Tomorrows Future Today

Copyright © 2023 by Robert Byrum. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of URLink Print and Media.

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Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023913575

ISBN 978-1-68486-477-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68486-479-9 (Digital)

11.07.23

Preface

This is not a happy-smiley book and if you are looking for a happy read; it is not. Shocking it may be to some, unbelievable; hopefully to just a few, and disheartening to those who take the time to understand and explore its message.

We have been living for a very long time with challenges to our way of life and our very existence; wars, the threat of nuclear obliteration, disease, and hazards of social upheaval. Until recently these were the major test we had as a people, a country and a world, and although they still exist today, we have managed them and prevailed.

Today, humanity faces a new trial, one that most of us knew little about until recently and many are still unaware about the magnitude and significance of what is happening. The changing world is engulfing us in a slow continuing and increasing steam bath, gradually turning the heat up as we swelter and sweat without a cool down switch. It is understandable that we are confused, distrustful and in denial of the reality that is occurring. We are not prepared nor have we been conditioned to deal with these changes. It is difficult to accept because events have increased so slowly in the past. But now they have finally speeded up and we are beginning, in a serious way, to see and experience firsthand their permanent destructive effects advance into our lives.

How do you cope with an ever-increasing warming earth? For those that follow us down the path towards the future that will be the question for the ages.

Other Books by the Author

A life Well Lived

Words Matter

Extinction

Dedicated to: The Climate Scientist who have worked so hard to inform the World.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Climate change and global warming

Tripping points

Stephen Hawking

The children

The oceans and fresh waters

Plastics, chemicals and pollution

Energy

Species extinction and forest reduction

Dams

Migration and human impact

Heat waves, heat domes & heat islands

Health

Methane, carbon dioxide & permafrost

Economics and politics

Rivers, water and flooding

Drought

Social disorder

Introduction

It is not in man’s nature to take immediate action when confronted with a difficult threating challenge. We tend to wait, to procrastinate to find excuses or denials for delays or non-action. Even in the face of overwhelming sound evidence or immediate need, we hesitate. We tend to think that the future will be as it has been in the past. It’s just too hard to change, its inconvenient, too expensive or embarrassing to omit that our long-standing beliefs may be wrong. We vacillate as individuals and as a nation. We may take small steps to pacify ourselves and others to show that we are doing something, but the big steps that are immediately necessary are just too difficult and inconvenient. We think that maybe that is enough that the problem might just disappear if we remove it from our thinking, or set it aside for other mundane interest.

But there comes a time for action when delay makes no sense. Are we there or have we delayed to long? There are those today, who will continue to obstruct, to deny what is obviously happening with the World’s climate crisis, with reasoning based on nothing more than partisan politics. It is often said that doing something over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. It is no exaggeration to say that what we and the rest of the World have been doing regarding the potential climate catastrophe fits that definition.

As humans our time frames are too short. We live in terms of today, tomorrow, next week or possibly even next year. We cannot fathom thinking or planning beyond these times because they do not apply to us. It is difficult for us to project how our actions and non-actions today may affect the future in fifty, a hundred or two hundred years or more. We are not wired for that, it’s contrary to our nature to be concerned about something we will not personally experience. We will not be here, so why be concerned about something so far in the future?

But our Mother Earth will still be around, she is not going anywhere. Our short-term human time spans mean nothing to her. She has been in existence for 4.5 billion years. We are the new kids on the block and of no consequence. She is forever. We can drastically change her as we have been doing for a long time but we cannot destroy her. We hear people speak of destroying the earth. It’s true, the damage we have been inflicting on her may make it impossible for her to support life as we have known it. But she will endure, we are not destroying her, we are only eliminating ourselves. We heat and rise her oceans, melt her glaciers, destroy her ecosystems but she is resilient; she is used to change. Since her birth she has been in a constant evolution of slow and on- going change. She has experienced and has recovered from many tragedies and extinctions over her long existence. She has suffered multiple mass destructions during which time more than 90% of her life forms ceased to exist. She has a great advantage over us. Time. There will always be time for her to adapt and mend from changing conditions as she has done in the past. Will we have time? The many hurts we are causing her now will heal. Will we?

The present conditions and necessary decisions facing us as individuals, as a nation and the World are such an example. The human world has had a very short history of what we are just beginning to experience but what the earth has suffered many times in its long past. We have never had the need, the time nor the opportunity to evolve and recover or even prevent the present and future destructive excesses we have brought upon ourselves. We do not know how to cope with the increasing extreme heat, floods and drought, the rise and heating of our oceans, massive and recuring fires, severe storms, melting of the world’s glaciers and ice caps; they are beyond our comprehension These events that are occurring today are changing Earths environment and will eventually completely revise ours.

For some time, there has been a growing conflict between two environments. Man has developed his toys: his cars, airplanes, TV, the Internet and thousands of other necessary items. It is only in his recent past that he has come to depend on these necessities. A short two hundred years ago they didn’t exist but humans managed to survive, reproduce and prosper. At that time Earths ecosystems were in a reasonable balance; it was a healthy place. Today that balance has changed dramatically, it is no longer healthy. Man has given Earth a lasting and increasing fever.

Earth’s environment is entirely different. It has no necessary dependence. It can exist with the degrading of the quality of its air, its water and increased temperatures. Can man? It will not be the same Earth but it will still exist. Both man and Earth are linked together; it can survive without man but man cannot live without a healthy earth environment. This is not to say that man will disappear, he will still be around. Those who are fortunate to survive may have the opportunity, given time, to evolve and adjust to the changing conditions. The big unknown is what will those conditions be like.

We must understand that we are not a unique species. Man has no more significant than other forms of life; he has come to the present not at the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to nature and the environment. Humans are an accident in the natural development of life, not a product of orderly development. We have survived so far, for only 1% of the time that dinosaurs walked the earth. It is easy for man to believe he is the ultimate in creation. That he is a superior creature and that his journey down through the ages of evolution has been completed. It has not and never will be. Evolution is a slow but continuing process that never ends. Consider how we and the world around us have changed in the last fifty, hundred or two hundred years? What habits and necessities have we acquired; what are the changes that have occurred over those very short time periods? How will they change in the next fifty, one hundred or two hundred years?

Men will come and go leaving behind only tiny scars to mark their passing. This as it has and always will be. They will one day disappear as the mountains have been eroded, the glaciers melted and the planets re-arranged. We are only a speck in time, only an instant in the constant evolution of change. Author Unknown

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever. Carl Sagan

We have moved from a rural society of self-reliance to an urban world of dangerous populations squeezed tightly together with millions of people sharing limited critical resources in large metropolitan areas. There is over eight billion of us now roving our planet, soon to be ten billion. Our old transport friend the horse has been replaced by hundreds of million vehicles of every type, speeding each day over paved roadbeds that were once productive lands. Our atmosphere has been degraded and today is filled with thousands of moving objects that we have come to depend on. Many of our essential fresh water supplies have been polluted and in numerous locations is unfit for consumption. We are heating our world to excess by the rapid depletion of its inadequate national resources, burning them up as if they will last forever, they will not; they are not infinite.

How many of these changes have been positive for mankind? It is certainly true that countless numbers of us, not all, live in the riche’s societies man have ever known. We have an unlimited number of luxuries no one would have possibly imagine a hundred years ago and we are not about to give them up, nor should we. Our perception as to what is necessary in our lives has so evolved that things that were once considered luxuries or of no account in the past have now become necessities that we will not or cannot part with. Because of our increased numbers we have been forced into conformity with the habits of the masses; we like and contribute to these changes.

But have we reached the point of maximum growth in this country and other parts of the world? And if not, how long can we continue with unending development within the limits we face as a people among our diminishing resources? We must recognize that more is not better. What are some of those limits? The persistent population increases, fresh water supplies, pandemics, diminished resources like ocean fisheries and arable farmlands and certainly other disruptions triggered by higher temperatures due too global warming.

The billions of people wandering around this big rock we call home have increasing diminish its healthy environment. We occupy over 80% of the earths lands and have become its most populous mammals. The U.S. alone consumes 20% of the world’s resources while holding only a small percentage of its population. Can this persist for the foreseeable future without destroying many of its essential ecosystems and necessary reserves? Both can sustain only so much damage and overuse before they become useless. Over ninety nine percent of all the species that have ever lived are no longer with us, they are gone forever. The increase in global warming is telling us we have already exceeded our limits to future growth. It will be impossible, as desirable as it would be, for clean energy to satisfy all of our current and future energy needs and accommodate future rapid growth while protecting the worlds ecosystems. We must slow down our expenditure of energy and natural resources. Continuing over consumption of fossil fuels will only decrease the limited amount of time we have available to delay an advancing tragedy.

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s poem, they are not equally fair. The road that we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork in the road-the one less traveled by offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth. Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring

Climate change and global warming

Climate change can make you a prisoner in your own house. It can destroy your home and kill you and your love ones. It can destroy your cultural heritage and long acquired memories. Gone are the days of wondering if the climate crisis will affect you, your neighborhood, your ability to earn a living or your future. It is no longer possible to think you are safe because you don’t live near the ocean. It is no longer a question of whether climate change is real, or where it is occurring; it’s there wherever you are. Until the climate is stabilized there will not be a new normal climate.

It will reach deep inland, up rivers and upon the ground where you live and work. It will change what food can be grown in areas that are experiencing new weather patterns and how much you have to eat. It is the flooding and burning of your homes and the heat that continues and will not leave on sweltering summer nights. This is the future that we thought would never come, but the future has arrived visibly and invisibility as sure as the sun rises each day. The tragedies that are occurring around the world today are like post cards from the future that has taken them a while to reach more of us where we live.

The world’s warming is the greatest issue of our times, actually of all times. It is also the largest issue that we are ignoring. Climate change is already causing dangerous and widespread disruptions to billions of people and countless species. This is not occurring in some remote future; it is today, everywhere. For the most part meaningful public policy to address and adapt to the increasing heating is sorely lacking in our government and governments around the world. Public discussion and action on the climate are quickly moved to the back burner; displaced by politics, inflation, gas prices, voting rights, abortion and other subjects of seemly importance that fade in the magnitude of the destructive consequences to our rapidly changing and warming world.

Numerous people don’t understand the difference between short-term weather that is happening daily and the climate that is measured over a much longer time period of 30 years or more. As I write this, I glance out the window at the snow and the thermometer that’s hovering at 30 degrees (below zero) and I can almost hear the cry, If global warming is real why is it so cold? Does the cold weather disprove climate change? No, climate change is the global warming that is occurring over a long time. Weather is today. Winter just doesn’t go away because average temperatures are rising. It has taken many years of studying daily weather data to understand the global climate and how it is changing. Climate is about the accumulation of long-term trends and it does not occur evenly around the globe. As you add energy to the system, in the form of heat created by carbon in the atmosphere, extremes can occur. Texas can have ice storms at the same time 33 million people are displaced in Pakistan due to heat and flooding; it is never all one thing or another. Global warming will not stop the seasons, but it is causing long-term trends in winter conditions that are strong and accelerating. Said Jason Smerdon, a climate physicist at Columbia University. "Today, for every two daily record high temperature maximums that occur there is only one daily record low. This is climate change happening. If the climate wasn’t warming there would be an equal chance of a daily record high temperature set compared to a daily record low. Over the rest of this century and beyond the number